CNN.com delivers interactive ATL experience

We noticed CNN.com has a created an interactive, parallax scrolling experience that documents the happenings at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

The full screen interactive page allows the user to continually scroll down to access every photo while factoids and text are mixed in.

The story makes use of advanced animation and scroll effects to create an eye-catching storytelling approach — a technique that’s becoming more and more popular with online news sites.

The experience offers two viewing modes — chronological or topical.

Overall, the page represents a solid effort by CNN, but also suffers a bit from a cluttered and sometimes confusing navigation scheme.

For example, the navigation buttons, while appearing ghosted when not in use, still add an annoying layer of text and icons that makes it difficult to enjoy the excellent photography. In addition, when viewing photos via category, the site displays dots in the lower left that appear to be navigation but can’t actually be clicked as one might expect.

In addition, there are points where the parallax scrolling and other effects seem a bit overdone and “just for the sake of it.” In some of our tests the scrolling and animations also seemed a bit choppy.